From a comfortable distance the BP oil disaster is depressing and horrific. But up close, it’s worse.
Two days in the Gulf of Mexico left me enraged – and deeply resolved. Both the widespread damage and the inadequacy of the response effort exceeded my worst fears. I’d spent a full day on the Gulf and we ended up soaked in oily water and seared by the journey.
By Tuesday night, I was home. My throat burned and my head was foggy and dizzy as I showed my pictures and video to my wife, Fran, and my 13-year-old daughter, Nicole, on the TV in the family room.
Images of the gooey peanut-butter colored oil and the blackened wetlands flashed by. Pictures of dolphins diving into our oily wake and brown pelicans futilely trying to pick oil off their backs popped on the screen. And, out of nowhere, Nicole put on the music from the season finale of Glee.
With all these horrific images on the screen, she had turned on the show’s final song of the year, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” The song, a slow, sweet, ukulele and guitar-driven version, couldn’t have added a deeper sense of tragic irony.
I choked up. And then that resolve kicked in: I wanted anyone/everyone to see what our addiction to oil had done to the Gulf and to contrast that with the sense of hope and possibility that “Somewhere” exudes.
Long story short, last weekend, Peter Rice, Chairman of Fox Networks Entertainment, gave Environmental Defense Fund the green light to use the song. The pictures you’ll see were shot by two incredibly talented EDF staffers, Yuki Kokubo and Patrick Brown – and a few are mine.
The inspiration was Nicole’s. This is for her, and for all of our kids – and theirs to come.
Article by David Yarnold, executive director of Environmental Defense Fund.
photo: Deepwater Horizon Response
1 comment
Hey David Yarnold Executive Director
Sometimes music and songs can do what the spoken word cannot. I’m not big environmentalist myself, but I believe that the BP Oil spill was badly mishandled. Its not widely known but there were ships from all over the world offering to help clean it up. And they got turned away. That song helped draw attention. Thanks, now I know who got that song on the air. Good work.
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